He laughed, still short of breath. ‘Frances and Stephanie Ling. I used to call them the Ling Erection Company.’
We headed for Princes Bridge, talking about student days. I wondered what the older generation of barristers thought of colleagues who walked around the streets in running shorts and sweat-soaked T-shirts with undignified slogans. Not a great deal, I would imagine.
On the bridge, Tony said, ‘Drew tell you I quit the DPP’s office?’
‘I read about it.’
‘Ten years I put in and here I am starting again at the bar. Like a twenty-two-year-old. Fat and balding twenty-two-year-old. Well, less fat than I was at twenty-two, actually. Plus my fucking wife’s walked off and the bitch gets half of everything.’
We crossed Swanston Street, went down Flinders. The mild sunshine was gone, dark clouds gathering. In the shadow of the buildings, the day was cooling quickly.
I sidestepped a large couple holding hands and gazing in wonder at the bustle. Everything about them said down from Dereel for the day.
‘Christ, it’s freezing,’ said Tony. ‘I’ve got to go to Sydney in an hour, can’t catch cold. Bugger this.’
He stepped into the street and waved.
Never mind that the cab was going the wrong way.
We got in. ‘Corner William and Little Bourke,’ said Tony.
‘Have to go round,’ said the driver. ‘Can’t turn.’ He had long blond hair in a ponytail, stylish dark glasses.
‘Whatever,’ said Tony, hugging himself. ‘Go up Russell.’
‘I can do this,’ said the driver.
‘Right. Not automatic that cab drivers know the way to anywhere.’
‘Believe me,’ said the driver. ‘This is automatic.’
‘Klostermann Gardier.’ Tony looked at me, brown eyes, soft, intelligent eyes. He turned his head to the window. ‘You’re a friend of Greer’s,’ he said. ‘He’s a good bugger. My advice about these people is to walk away, Rene.’
He frowned. ‘Christ, that was Russell. What are you doing?’
‘Next one’s quicker,’ said the driver.
Tony leaned over, put his mouth behind the man’s ear. ‘How can the next one be quicker?’
‘I’m a cab driver,’ the man said. ‘I know.’
Tony sat back. ‘That logic,’ he said, ‘has become less and less compelling.’
The driver turned left into Bourke, into a jam. ‘Oh Jesus,’ Tony shouted, ‘what the fuck are you doing, there’s a fucking mall down there, go right next, right into Russell, can you grasp that, you idiot?’
‘Excited,’ said the driver, taking both hands off the wheel. ‘No need. Shortcut. Believe me, I know what I’m doing.’
Tony didn’t believe. He directed the driver every metre of the way until we were outside his chambers in William Street.
‘So,’ said the driver, not looking around. ‘Was that so bad? Here we are, no problem. Ten bucks fifty. Coupla coffees and a focaccia.’
Tony looked at me. We got out the kerbside door. I found seven dollars. Tony opened the passenger door and put the money on the seat. ‘No problem?’ he said. ‘Here’s seven bucks, no problem. Be fucking grateful I pay you anything.’
‘Have a good day,’ said the driver. ‘Cunt.’
I sat in a comfortable chair in Tony’s panelled office and read an old issue of the Australian Law Journal while he showered. My ignorance of the law was disconcerting. Could I have forgotten that much? To forget, you must first know.
Tony came out, pink, combed, dark trousers, black shoes, knotting a spotted tie over a seagull-white shirt, carrying a towel.
‘What happened to Stephanie? The younger sister, wasn’t she?’
I nodded. I didn’t like going back this far.
‘She was a spunk,’ Tony said. ‘I remember she got in with that student paper crowd, superior little up- themselves arseholes.’
‘She married an artist.’
‘Who? I’d know him?’
‘I doubt it. He killed himself.’
‘Paintings be worth more then. Well, where do I start? I go back a good way with TransQuik. Before Levesque and Co. I did a bit of work for the company, they were buying up the odd collapsing trucking business. Manny Lousada, he was the owner then, bright bloke but perverse. He had a talent for the complex. Nothing was allowed to be simple. You arrive at a fairly simple, standard arrangement whereby you’d do a deal in two, maybe three stages. You show them your thing, they show you theirs. No. Not good enough. Manny wants six stages with fiddly bits at every stage and impossible delaying and opt-out clauses of all kinds, all for no discernible reason.’
He started rubbing his hair with the towel. ‘One day, Manny rings me, he’s had an approach, a terrific approach. Foreign investor wants to buy forty per cent of the company. For five million bucks. That values TransQuik at twelve-and-a-half million, which is heading for twenty times earnings. Simply off with the fairies.’
Tony sat down behind the file-laden desk and took two red apples out of a drawer. ‘Want one? I’m on the apple and chicken soup diet. Murder but it works.’
I declined.
He took a bite of apple and worked at it for a while. ‘Assets were a lot of ageing trucks and a couple of warehouses. Income about three-quarters of a million. Prospects not bad, but, Jesus, this is ’84, transport not fucking information technology.’
The phone on the desk rang. ‘Tell him I’m in conference,’ said Tony. ‘I know he wants to talk to me. He always wants to talk to me. I don’t want to talk to him. Louise, I know the pressure you’re under. Tell him to tell them everything is being taken care of. Nothing to worry about. I expect to hear today. I’ll ring him tomorrow. Yes, I’ll get there. Do me a favour, ring Wilkes, tell him I’ll talk to him from the airport.’
He looked at his watch, looked at me and shook his head. ‘You think having crims for clients is bad? You don’t know bad until you have solicitors for clients.’
More apple. Most of apple. ‘Well, speed this up. Excuse my mouth full. The deal offer comes through a solicitor in Sydney. His name is Rick Shelburne, two-person practice in Randwick. I rang around. Rather odd practice, they say. Nothing off the street. He pops up now and again for white-shoe boys in Queensland, developers, wheeler- dealers, suchlike. Said to have a talent for changing councillors’ votes. He’s also acted for a person in Darwin of major interest to the Feds. Been up there?’
I shook my head.
‘I did my time,’ Tony said. ‘Thought lawyers could change things. Hah hah. The Territory’s where you hear a little plane buzzing on a pitchblack night, you don’t automatically think it’s the Flying Doctor back from another mercy mission. Get me?’
‘Roughly.’
‘Well Shelburne was cause for concern. But we go to the next stage. This bloke flies in from Europe. Suite at the Windsor. He’s called Carlos Siebold, a Paraguayan based in Hamburg, he says. Speaks English with a Spanish accent. But there’s German in there, hard to explain. Smoothest thing I’ve ever met. Ruby ring on the right pinky.’
Tony rolled an invisible ring on the little finger of his right hand. It looked relaxing.
‘Could be a cardinal, could be a fucking hitman,’ he said. ‘Anyway, Shelburne’s there too, he doesn’t say much. Siebold says he represents, this is the point, something called Klostermann Gardier of Luxembourg. A private bank. The price for the forty per cent turns out to be $4 million. That’s still over the odds, but never mind. Siebold says, deal done, Klostermann will provide a facility of $20 million for expansion, principal repayable as share of after-tax profits over ten years.’
I said, ‘Without having a Harvard MBA, that sounds like Christmas.’
‘Many Christmases at once. And Klostermann is not the investor. It acts for the investor. Conduit. Siebold gives us the names of other freight companies the investor has money in. One in Manila, one in Hong Kong, one somewhere else, I can’t remember. I took Lousada and his offsider, nodding twerp called Giddy, we went into the
